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On my flight down to San Francisco this past weekend, I was reading an interesting article all about how most married couples could not fathom the concept of working together day in and day out. As I read it I had to chuckle as my husband and I have successfully ran a business together every day for the past ten years and have grown closer and have been able to build a stronger business because of our partnership.

Although we are married there are certain principles we follow that have helped us to shape a strong, productive professional partnership that hasn’t broken down despite the immense amount of challenges we have faced. These six signs of great partnerships have become very apparent to me over the past few years and I hope they help you become a better partner to your partner (whether spouse or otherwise).

They trust each other: When Dan makes a plan, I trust that he has my best interests at heart and that he has the capacity to do a great job inside his role without my interference. I don’t second-guess his choices nor question every move that he makes.

The respect each other: I don’t tell him how to do his job (unless I can share some helpful input) and he doesn’t tell me how to do my job. I verbally honor him in front of our colleagues and regularly express my gratitude to him for what he brings to the partnership.

They give each other the freedom to mess up: Neither of us is perfect and both of us have made some big mistakes in the history of running our business but we are committed to letting the mistakes stay in the past and to not let them interfere with the organization’s future. We don’t blame, judge or criticize but work together to pick up the pieces and move forward.

They play to their strengths. I don’t try to do his job and he doesn’t try to do mine. We give each other lots of space and don’t attempt to manage each other. I accept who he is and the limitations he has as a leader and he does the same for me. We meet in the middle and work as a unit instead of looking at it like a who-is-the-best contest.

They are honest with each other: Because we trust each other, we can be honest with each other when it comes to making difficult decisions. We share our doubts, fears and apprehensions with each other and don’t worry about looking weak. The communication is open and we both accept that sometimes we may see things differently and have the permission to talk about it.

There are a handful of steps that a vending operator needs to take in order to be maximally profitable in the healthy vending machine business, but there is one that people just don’t know about, and what makes it extra appealing is its win-win factor. Before we go straight into the big secret, I feel it’s important to review the other main components of a successful healthy vending machine business, just in case you don’t know how to set yourself up for success in the healthy vending machine business.

First

You’ll want to choose a successful franchise that is willing to train you. They must help you choose the best products for your machine and their business model must make sure they are continually invested in your success. Choosing the best healthy vending machine franchise is a powerful step towards success.

Second

You’ll want to choose your location wisely, and a great franchise will help you identify a great location. They may even help you secure the acquisition and do the location scouting for you. The reason location is key, is that you’ll have your machine in a place where people want healthy snacks (such as gyms, hospitals and schools). You’ll also want a location that agrees to only have healthy vending machines and that way your machine is next to a traditional junk food candy machine, which could tempt a customer to buy their high fat, high sugar Twinkies.

Third

You’ll want to be sure your vending machine offers remote monitoring, so you know what’s happening without leaving your home or office. Real time remote monitoring enables you to have a full stock of fresh products since you can view your inventory and see if there are any maintenance issues. It also helps reduce lost sales from items that are out of stock. A high quality franchise will only carry high quality machines, so again if you choose your franchise wisely you don’t have to worry about these things.

Fourth

Choose the most popular healthy snacks and beverages not just the ones you love. Sometimes new vending machine operators like to put their favorite snacks in their machines, but the most popular snacks will sell better. If you partner with a great franchise, they’ll help you choose your product mix so you don’t have to go through the trial and error phase that so many first time vending operators go through. This means that they should be customizing individual product mixes for each individual machine.

There is a distinction to be made between the Jet Lagged and the Jet Stressed. It is the same difference between the chronic and the acute. One is acute and the other is chronic. Jet stress is in fact chronically acute. The value of this distinction alone is what separates those who fly well and those who don’t. A second valuable observation to our cause is that any time Man has conquered or thrived in an environment he has done so by taking his own environment with him. To beat jet lag in all it’s forms you and I must do the same, frequent fliers more so than others. The current conversation on the subject of flying well repeat the buzz words like body clock and melatonin too often without a change in results or progress. The conversation is long in the tooth with the same tired advice – get plenty of sleep, drink plenty of water and keep your mind active. Old wives tales and a pastiche of personal remedies exist alongside rigid scientific data. The masses of frequent fliers and business travellers are confounded and struggle to make sense of disjointed and often confusing information. Productivity, personal health, relationships and global business’s bottom line suffers.

The Most Intensive Frequent Fliers Hold The Key

I once read some good business advice which preached the value of catering to the extremes of a target audience. The notion was that if they were catered for all other demographics within that target market would be well taken care of. Frequent business fliers are representative of this extreme. An article in Wired magazine* charted the travel paths of business fliers over a year demonstrating the intensity of travel schedules of frequent fliers. The goals of business travellers to maximise productivity on the road, make the right impressions, close the deal and stay healthy bring home the urgency of the conversation at hand.

Unhealthy Flying Doesn’t Pay, What Are The Costs

The price we pay for not dealing with frequent flying challenges and it’s associated woes outweighs the benefits. The costs are measured on a personal and global business scale. You can measure it on the personal scale with the tendency towards weight gain, insomnia, tiredness, fatigue, adrenal stress, hormone irregularities, trouble conceiving and the list goes on and on. The cost to global business is measured in millions of dollars in lost productivity. A 2003 New York Times survey* estimated that heavy-duty business travellers lost about 20 per cent productivity due to trans-meridian travel. A recent AirPlus Traveller Productivity White Paper* also highlights the link between business travel and productivity.

Solutions Need An Upgrade

Over the short ascent of global business travel and globalisation many advances and efficiencies have been made in the area of civil aviation. The hardware of the trade, the planes have seen many modifications including fly by wire technology and a new generation of fuel-efficient planes to take us into the 21st century. Contrast that with the plight of the frequent business flier, healthy flying advice has remained static. There has been no respite in terms of the pressure and demands in the workplace. Global mobile working is on the increase see the Worldwide ERC website* for confirmation.

Look to Hollywood as an example of what I mean by this. A script is produced, a film is cast, locations are scouted out and the cast goes on location to shoot. Travelling to locations are incidental to the outcomes sought be it a film or a business meeting. Yet the quality of the end product can depend so much on the well-being of the participants. As globalisation makes the world smaller and calls for collaborative groups to come together in the name of a common goal over a short period of time, the need to be fully functional and productive is a conditional necessity for success.